


Bucky Barnes's Bad Hair Day

by tisfan



Series: Open Ask Prompts [18]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Hair Brushing, Hair Washing, M/M, Panic Attacks, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 18:40:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12018711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Bucky thinks he needs a haircut...He also thinks there's no FUCKING WAY he's going to let a perfect stranger tip him back in a chair and be near his head with sharp scissors...





	Bucky Barnes's Bad Hair Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justalurkr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalurkr/gifts), [celtic7irish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celtic7irish/gifts), [Mythdefied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythdefied/gifts).



> For these three prompts!  
> justalurkr said: Headcanon: Bucky keeps his hair long because Steve's hair is still going strong with the 40s vibe. Clint' s hair sorely tests his resolve, tho!
> 
> celtic7irish said: Hi, tisfan! I'm going to drop a prompt/request in here, feel free to ignore it! I know you're busy, and you have so many stories already! Anyhow, I'm reading a fic where Bucky is...well, fixing his hair (you know, brushing, blow-drying, etc), because hair just isn't that pretty without some serious maintenance. And now I really, really want a fic where Tony is helping Bucky with his hair. Like a comfort thing (or a sex thing, I like both). If you feel like it. Thank you!
> 
> gothgalahoy said: Are you still taking prompts? If so, here's a WinterIron one. They're both touch starved. One of them figures it out during matinance on Bucky's/James' arm. Epic cuddles and feels ensue.

There was nothing wrong with long hair, Bucky told himself. Men wore their hair long these days, just as often as women wore their hair short.

Hydra had let his hair grow; thick and luxurious, because for the better part of the fifties and sixties the Asset had angry, red scars on his head and they were both noticeable and memorable. They’d faded over time, but by the time they did, his handlers didn’t bother to look at him anymore with an eye toward fashion. As long as the Asset was relatively clean, no one seemed to care.

The scars, when he could see them through the thick hair, were silvery and flat, these days. It wouldn’t draw so much attention, if he cut his hair shorter.

And it wasn’t like anyone had said anything -- much -- to him about it. Steve had ruffled his hair one time, and said he looked like a mop. But that was Steve, and he was always being a little punk, even though he wasn’t that little anymore.

Natasha had fingered the ends of his hair at one point, scowling, and then a box of hair care products had shown up in his next delivery. Oil treatments and mend-the-ends care, and enough goo and gel and spritzes to make up a haberdashery counter display.

So, there was nothing wrong with long hair and Bucky was pretty much okay with that.

Right up until Barton got a haircut.

Bucky was used to Barton being a little on the scruffy side; not quite the “murder hobo” look that Bucky himself sported. (He’d lost track of where the murder hobo comment started, but someone had said it, and then everyone had said it, and Bucky just gave people his murder glare and went on with his life. He really, most of the time, did not care what other people thought about him.) Barton had a mop of sandy-blonde hair, scruff on his chin and he always, always missed a patch of bristles on one side of his jaw or the other. He was frequently unshowered, sometimes went for days at a time in the same pair of broken-string sweatpants, and often had his shirt on inside out.

Avengers… were not fastidious people, really. If you could fight when you were in your combat gear, you could lounge around in the common room in a terrycloth bath towel with cucumber slices on your eyelids. No judgements. ( _Tony_. And yeah, okay, so Bucky was totally judging that. Mostly. Except he had to admit it did wonders for the bags under Tony’s eyes from lack of sleep and if Bucky borrowed some cucumber slices for himself once in a while, no one had to know about it.)

So when Barton came in with his new haircut, Bucky noticed.

He was cleaned up, his hair was gelled to perfection and the sides were spiked and weirdly soft-seeming. Bucky… had the weirdest urge to rub his hand over Barton’s head and test the texture of that hair.

And just as he was thinking that, Tony came into the room, one of his unbelievably vile smoothies in one hand. He wrapped his lips around the straw and took a deep suck from the cup. Bucky tracked Tony’s every movement -- helpless against his obsession with the man -- watching the flex of his backside as he walked, the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled and said, “still the prettiest, Legolas.” Tony ran one bronzed hand through Barton’s hair, smiled even wider, and _did it again_.

Barton stropped his head against Tony’s hand, practically purring like a kitten. “You think I look hot?”

“Oh, my god,” Tony said, lowering his sunglasses to give Barton the once-over. Slowly. “You look like a billion bucks, and believe me, I know what that looks like.”

Barton chuckled and looked down at himself. “Feel like at least fifty-thousand, so it’ll have to do.”

“I’d totally do you,” Tony assured him. He grabbed a banana from the basket, rubbed Barton’s head one more time. “Save some kisses for me.”

“You got it, sugar-daddy,” Barton said.

Bucky watched, dumb-struck, until Tony was out of the kitchen and back into the elevator. What _the fuck_ was going on?

“Maybe I should get a haircut,” Bucky mused, fingering the ends of his long hair, then flipping them out of his face. He wondered if Tony would rub his hair like that, if it were short and spiky and soft.

***

_You cannot teach fearlessness with terror._

It wasn’t… it wasn’t… it shouldn’t have been… Bucky was not afraid.

The barber shop had a row of windows that let Bucky look inside without actually approaching the counters or barbers. There were shiny silver chairs that tipped backward to let a customer get a shampoo. Another row of chairs had loud dryers where women and men alike sat, flipping through magazines or poking at their phones while they waited for their hair to dry, or for various chemicals to finish processing.

Bucky’s overly sensitive nose caught the whiff of harsh astringents and bleach, colors and curl-relaxers. It was overpowering, even outside, making his eyes sting and the inside of his nose flare and ache.

His ear caught the delicate sound of scissors, metal against hair, _snip snip_. The buzz of clippers, the harsh burr of hairdryers. The click and hiss of flatirons.

One stylist thumped the chair’s pedal a few times. Another leaned her client back into the sinks and the woman under the cape and towels moaned with almost sensual pleasure.

Bucky shivered all over, his flesh crawling.

Too many people. Too close to him.

Sharp blades; Bucky could identify dozens of potential weapons.

_He… could not do this._

There were too many risks; not to himself. If it was just his own safety, his own comfort, maybe he could manage it. He’d done so much worse, allowed it to happen.

 _You couldn’t teach fearlessness with terror._ But you could become numb to fear. There was nothing else that Hydra could have done to his body, to his mind, that was half as terrible as what he’d already experienced.

It wasn’t what it would do to him. Bucky could lie to himself if it gave him comfort. But it was also what Bucky might do, if someone came too close to him with those scissors. If they tilted him back. If… if…

He…

He might hurt someone.

Bucky clung to that idea. And then turned away.

***

The one time, Bucky thought, that he wanted to get into the elevator, go straight up to his floor and take refuge in the back of his closet, would be the one time that Tony would stick an arm in between the doors before they closed and cram himself in the elevator, a whole horde of paparazzi not inches behind his heels.

“Hey there, Ghost in the Shell,” Tony said, punching the button for the common floors with unnecessary force. “What a day, don’t tell me, I’ll tell yo-- are you all right?”

And Bucky was just weak enough to admit the truth.

“No.”

Tony blinked at that, brown eyes full of worry, that subtle flare at the corners. He opened his mouth, maybe to make some sort of smart-assed comment, and at this point, Bucky would welcome it. Would welcome the spark of heat, the frisson of anger. Instead, what he said was, “Is there anything I can do?”

“I… need a haircut,” Bucky confessed. He shook his head, letting the long tresses swing, illustrating the need. “An’ I can’t… I jus’ can’t. Get in one of those chairs.” It hurt, confessing. Like pulling out his fingernails. Admitting it. He was the goddamn Winter Soldier and he couldn’t fuckin’ sit in a chair and let some harmless little gossipy woman cut his fucking hair. Heat bloomed over his cheeks, across the back of his neck.

“I couldn’t take a shower,” Tony said, apropos of nothing. Or maybe it wasn’t quite nothing. “After Afghanistan. For months. Couldn’t… have water in my face.”

“How’d… how’d you cope?”

“Badly,” Tony said. “Wouldn’t ask for help. Knew I needed it, but…” He shrugged a shoulder. “Thought I could do it on my own.” He gave Bucky a direct look. “And I know you _can_. But the thing is, you don’t _have to._ ”

Jesus fuck, did the guy mind-read, too, on top of everything?

“All ears,” Bucky said, “if ya got a suggestion.”

Tony flicked a quick look at him. “You trust me?”

Bucky shrugged. He didn’t not trust Tony, which was more than he felt about most people. He and Tony, well, they’d already seen the worst of each other, hadn’t they?

“Come on,” Tony said. “Come up to my place, I have a set up from-- well, it’s what I do, isn’t it? Change my environment to suit myself.”

The whole reason this had become a thing for Bucky was because he wanted Tony to touch his hair, to joke and flirt with him, the way he had with Barton, right? He trusted Tony not to hurt him. Trusted himself to not to hurt Tony; never again.

Wordlessly, Bucky nodded.

Tony’s bathroom was some sort of miracle; huge, larger than the freaking house Bucky had grown up in, nearly. There was a deep jacuzzi pool, a sauna, a few different showers. One of those chairs that tipped back into a sink and Bucky was frozen at the sight of it, until Tony lifted it, biceps straining, and moved it out of the room without even asking what was up with that. Bucky loathed himself, mocked himself for being afraid of a goddamn chair, but he wasn’t about to deny that he felt worlds and away better with it gone.

Tony reached out, hesitated. “Can I?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, roughly.

Tony fingered Bucky’s hair, rubbing one lock together. Tipped it up to inspect the ends. Peered at his scalp. “You’ve been taking pretty good care of it,” he said. “Bet Nat sent you one of those boxes of hers; I have one for skin care. She seems to think my hands need to be soaked in moisturizer twice a day.”

The way Tony’s fingers felt, running over Bucky’s scalp, he would agree. Tony’s skin was like velvet, heavy and soft at the same time.

Bucky shivered, goosebumps scrawling over his head and down the back of his neck. Tony pulled back and Bucky reacted without thinking, grabbing his wrist. “No, don’t…” he said. “That… feels good.”

Tony chuckled. “Well, I’ve been told I have magic fingers, in more ways than one. So, what are you looking at doing to your hair? I mean, right now it’s just kinda ragged. We could trim the ends up, make it all one length, just kinda get your toes wet, as far as the hair cutting business goes.”

“Do you know _how_ to cut hair?”

Tony gave him a flat stare. “I built a new element in my workshop, I think I can give you a trim, Edward Scissorhands. I might not be able to get real fancy, but if you can handle this, I have a hairdresser, and she does call-ins.”

“Start slow,” Bucky said, nodding.

“Yep,” Tony said. “So, you can wash your hair, or just get it wet, or I can help you with that, whatever you need.”

Bucky chewed on his bottom lip. Tony had been so, so kind, and Bucky wasn’t sure if he wanted to ask any further.

“My… back when I was a kid, my Ma washed my hair, bent over the sink,” Bucky said, hesitantly. There weren’t any bolts of fear or apprehension with that, just the faint, old buzz of annoyance when she got water in his ears, or sometimes it would drip down his back. And, of course, the old impatience for being a boy of eight or nine and having to be clean, some sort of anathema to his normal way of life. Stickball and paper-waxed horehound candies.

“I can do that,” Tony said. His hand was still in Bucky’s hair, fingers soothing on the back of his neck. “Might want to lose the shirt, and… yeah, suit’s probably not the best for that, gimme a minute.”

Which was how Bucky found himself on his knees in front of Tony Stark, the back of his neck horribly exposed and vulnerable.

Except he kept waiting for the panic to rear up -- how was it possible to have a panic attack about the possibility of having a panic attack? -- but it didn’t.

The water was warm, soothing, and Tony’s voice was constant and calm in his ear. He didn’t talk about anything urgent, or even anything important. A little bit about Edwin Jarvis, his father’s butler who’d practically raised him, a couple of pranks he’d pulled in high school. Some of his past with Jim Rhodes, back at MIT. Good stories. From a simpler, happier time.

The shampoo Tony used on him, working it through the long locks, smelled like Tony.

By the time Tony rinsed him out and tied a towel around the dripping mess, Bucky was almost completely relaxed, just the soft, warm feel of arousal -- not even urgent, just a bittersweet thread of wanting that ran through his contentment -- keeping him awake.

Tony brought him into the dressing room, a huge showcase with a few dressers and clothing racks, but mostly mirrors. “I thought you might be more comfortable if you can see me the whole time I’m near your head with a pair of scissors.”

Bucky nodded, took the chair that Tony offered. He was shivering minutely, and Tony kept a hand on his shoulder until he calmed.

Tony ran a comb through his hair, the various conditioners and detanglers making that task ten times easier than it had been whenever Bucky tried it. His hair was stupidly thick.

“I’m just gonna even it out here, okay?” Tony said, parting it a little to the left, and then checking the length by running his fingers down it, standing just in front of Bucky and leaning back a little to look. He was shirtless, as Bucky was, but Bucky hadn’t noticed the scarring on Tony’s chest before, where his arc reactor had been. The source, Bucky knew, of everything that had come after; Tony’s own missile that had nearly killed him, that he had used to rise from the ash. Becoming Iron Man.

Bucky wanted nothing more than to rest his ear against that scar, listening to the heart underneath, feeling the heat of Tony’s skin. He didn’t.

Tony showed him a pair of scissors, sharp as they had to be for cutting hair, let Bucky feel the weight of them. They were a weapon, although it hardly mattered. Bucky’s entire body was a weapon, it wasn’t like one pair of blades was going to make a difference.

“You ready?”

“Go ahead.”

As a supersoldier, Bucky could hold his breath for about eleven minutes. He was pretty sure he stopped breathing as soon as Tony opened the scissors and remained in that state until Tony was done. He exhaled in a rush as soon as Tony stepped back, vision flecked with speckles of black and red, head spinning. Tony put the scissors down and was back to standing in front of Bucky, one hand on either shoulder.

“You okay?”

Bucky wasn’t sure what to do; he was… he thought he was okay, but… “Yeah,” he said, “but… stay?” He wasn’t sure what he was asking for. It was Tony’s room, if anyone would be leaving, it would be Bucky.

“Touch-starved,” Tony said. “Check. You know that’s a thing, right? Neurologists have discovered that skin-to-skin contact is vital to mental health.” The whole time he was talking, Tony’s fingers stroked down Bucky’s shoulders, raising trails of gooseflesh in their wake. “Physical contact is necessary to being human, almost as much, if not moreso, than food. There’s nothing wrong with it; that you can even miss it shows that you’re still a person inside.”

Bucky found himself suddenly on the floor, arms around Tony’s waist who was sprawled, undignified. “It’s okay,” Tony repeated, and Bucky pressed his cheek to Tony’s belly, listening to his heart racing under his skin. “It’s all right.”  

They sat that way for a good twenty minutes, Bucky letting his hand wander, touching as much of Tony’s skin as he could reach, his back, his hip, across his shoulder, let his finger trace the lines of Tony’s face. When the pad of his index finger brushed Tony’s mouth, his lips pursed and he pressed a kiss gently to Bucky’s fingers.

Finally, Bucky was able to get himself under some sort of control, some semblance of sanity. He was blushing, furiously embarrassed, ashamed of himself and his weakness. “Tony, I’m…”

“Don’t say sorry, honeybunch,” Tony said. “Consider it doctor’s orders. We can make it part of your recovery. One hairwash and cuddle session every few days. Do you a world of good.”

Bucky ducked his chin. “You don’t gotta take care of me.”

Tony put his finger against Bucky’s jaw and gently and lifted his face. “It’s good for me, too. Helps me, knowing I’m making a difference. If you need it, I’m… honored. To help.”

Bucky considered that for a long moment. “Okay… okay.”

“Then I’ll see you in --” Tony glanced down at his wrist, which didn’t contain a timekeeping device at all “-- tomorrow, same time?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, his voice rough. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was not beta'd at all, any obvious errors are completely mine
> 
> Now in [polish](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15912723) by [Lampira7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lampira7/pseuds/Lampira7)


End file.
